


Pull Over the Line

by audreycritter



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Canon Observant, College AU, F/M, Gen, Modern Magic Realism, canon warnings apply, is it still a college AU if half of them are administrative staff?, non-canon application of name to user Minister of War, tw hospitals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Eugenides doesn't want to go to college, he just wants tobethere.College administration is a headache, but at least he has a key to the library.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides, Eddis | Helen/Sophos
Comments: 86
Kudos: 109





	1. Intro to YA Lit

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shearwater's "Dread Sovereign." 
> 
> This is a college AU I said I'd never write and accidentally started anyway. I'm playing loose and fast with the hierarchy of college administration, aging characters up or down a bit to fit a modern setting a bit better, and following canon where it suits me. Also, I gave some of Gen's family actual names for writing purposes, but I haven't added anyone who isn't referenced in canon (ie, he has two brothers and two sisters). 
> 
> Thanks to lurkinglurkerwholurks and storieswelove for feedback and encouragement. You guys are real ones.

Lights strung between the trees lit the grass court, but the music and party were all inside. It was too cold for most people to venture outside the banquet hall. Inside, the wedding party danced with guests.

Beneath one of the skeletal trees, a young woman sat, in a white dress, with an untouched glass of wine. Her hair was dark and pulled back into an elegant knot someone must have spent an hour twisting and arranging. Her pale cheeks were pink with cold, but she didn’t seem to notice the chill.

Eugenides perched on one of the thicker branches, watching intently. He hadn’t expected anyone to come out further than the patio, to smoke outside in disregard of the no smoking signs. He’d only come out of curiosity. It wasn’t often that someone rented the hall the three colleges shared for a wedding.

The woman didn’t look upset. She didn’t look much of anything, he thought, which was odd for someone in a wedding dress. He was certain she was lonely. It seemed to fill the air around her, an aloofness and a profound sense of isolation that made him almost frightened.

She raised the glass once, as if to sip it, and then hurled it into the trees. It hit the trunk beneath him and shattered. She stood to stare at it, and then she looked straight at him, like she had known he was there.

Eugenides froze.

Her expression wasn’t flush with fury, or embarrassment. It was something more arrogant, like scorn. He slipped down out of the tree, dropping silently to the frosted grass.

“You’d think a boy your age would have outgrown playing spy,” she said.

“It isn’t playing,” he said, his temper flaring at the implied insult and dismissal. She wasn’t much older than him. “You’d think a bride wouldn’t hide from her own reception.”

It wasn’t a subtle jab at all, but even open strikes could land. She glanced at the party, thirty yards away in a warm building.

“It’s a joke,” she said, bitterly. “Let them have their charade.”

“No offense,” Eugenides said, “but you don’t seem like the type to be bullied into a marriage.”

“Nor bullied into keeping one,” she agreed, with a proud tilt to her chin. “Which is why I left.”

“Less than three hours has to be some kind of record,” Eugenides commented, careful to not step on broken glass. He didn’t want the bottoms of his fitted boots sliced up unnecessarily.

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said, patronizing.

Eugenides was annoyed. “Did you catch him cheating or did he catch you?”

Her eyes flashed, but she fell silent. He noticed that her fingers were trembling-- her lip didn’t quiver, she didn’t cry, but she was cold and upset. Remorse shot through him.

“He’s an idiot,” Eugenides offered. He didn’t have to know the man to know this.

She laughed, a short and broken noise like the glass shattering, and nodded.

“He is. His idea of being discreet was the choir loft after the ceremony. He thought I’d stay with him to protect my reputation.”

Eugenides winced, not at the infidelity itself, but at the thinly veiled hurt in her bitterness.

“So, you’ll let them party without you, instead of throwing him out?” he asked, sitting on the stone bench. She sat beside him, a careful several inches away.

“They’re his people. His friends, his family. His mistake was thinking their opinions were the ones I cared about. I can live without them.” She said this simply, a mere statement of fact.

“And your people?” Eugenides prompted. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just left when she saw him in the tree, except for not wanting to leave her alone.

“I’ve lived up to all my father’s lofty expectations for me,” she said.

“Then, he’s an idiot, too,” Eugenides said.

“He’s dead,” she answered, with a smile entirely without humor.

He ducked his head. “I’m sorry. Was it…was it long ago?”

“Long enough,” she said.

“My mother died,” Eugenides offered. It still pierced him to say it, to hear it aloud.

“Mine, too,” she said, with acidic triumph.

“I suppose you’re winning, then,” he said, and she laughed that same brittle laugh; a little jagged, a little startled. She looked over at him then and her expression, so stony and impassive, softened.

“Oh,” she said, gently. “It wasn’t long ago for you. I’m sorry.”

Eugenides shrugged, his chest tight.

He stood and held out a hand.

She stared at it.

“You should have at least one dance at your own wedding,” he said. “One with someone who knows who you really are.”

“You don’t know me,” she shot back. “You don’t even know my name.”

“You’re Irene,” he said. “Senior at Attolia College. You graduate this spring with a degree in business administration. And you just walked out of your own wedding reception, and your marriage to the dean’s son, because he was sleeping with his brother’s girlfriend. You knew he was cheating on you before you got to the reception, but you didn’t leave until he tried to drink your wine after he finished his own.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Who are you?” she hissed.

“Not playing,” Eugenides said succinctly.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“To give you one dance on a very bad night,” he said honestly.

“I don’t want your pity,” she spat.

“I don’t want your condescending humor,” he said. “I’m very good at what I do, and not very many people catch me. In over five years, you are the first. Whether or not I allowed it is for you to decide-- I’ll let you keep some of your pride. But you did catch me, because I stayed to watch you. I thought you looked beautiful and sad, and I know how it feels to be lonely in a crowd.”

“I’m not going to dance with you,” she said, with a single eyebrow arched in disdain.

“Then don’t,” he said, still extending his hand. “Nobody will ever know that you didn’t. I’m very good at secrets.”

The mask cracked for a mere fraction of a second and she smiled despite herself, at his bravado.

She reached out and took his hand.


	2. Fundamentals of Business Administration

_Five Years Later_

***

The cell wasn’t much of a cell. It wasn’t even a cell at all, actually. It was just an empty classroom, stripped of everything but a few chairs. Faded and torn poster tape marred the dingy painted cinder block walls. The room was in the basement of the main college building, two doors down from the college security office. Gen was lying on three chairs he’d arranged into a line, staring upside down at an old flyer glued to the side of the radiator casing.

A face appeared in the square of plexiglass set into the heavy green door. The door opened and Gen sat up.

“Come with me,” the man said, silhouetted in the light from the hall. He brushed irritably at dust on the sleeve of his shawl-collared sweater.

“Why?” Gen asked suspiciously.

“You’d rather wait here for them to get in touch with the police?” the man replied sharply.

Gen got up and followed him, out of the room and past the grimy, fluorescent security office, to an elevator at the end of the corridor. He regarded the man with some open suspicion, but followed him onto an elevator that creaked beneath their feet. The man jabbed the button for the top floor, curling his lip in distaste and wiping his finger on his pressed khakis.

“It’s the same button,” Gen said.

“What?” the man looked at him.

“The button,” Gen said. “It’s the same button when you get on the elevator from the first floor. It didn’t get special dirt because it was in the basement.”

“Shut up,” the man replied.

“I know who you are,” Gen said. “You’re Dean Sounis’ assistant.”

“And I will end you, if necessary,” the man replied with considerable chill. “Keep your mouth shut.”

The elevator doors slid open on a waiting room with decent, but not expensive, carpet. A line of glass-walled offices was on one side, across from a curved reception desk.

“I want to leave,” Gen said plaintively, dragging his feet as he followed. The reception desk was dim, the lights off. It was dark outside the windows to the left.

“Then you shouldn’t have broken in,” Mr. Magus said.

“No,” Gen corrected. “I shouldn’t have gotten _caught_.”

“Split hairs all you want,” Mr. Magus replied with a cool, humorless smile down at him. “You’re still stuck with me for now.”

He opened the door to his own office.

* * *

“But why are _they_ here?” Gen demanded, around a mouthful of Nature Valley granola bar. Crumbs dropped all over his pants and he left them alone. Mr. Magus didn’t look impressed, maybe even a little disgusted.

Of the three Mr. Magus had added to their party, only one glared at Gen for his rudeness. Gen ignored him.

They were in a copse of pine trees, planted to be windbreak, only a hundred yards from the first of Attolia College’s buildings. Eddis College was to the south, the campus on a hill and low-lit with blue emergency pillar lights. Theirs were always in good repair, unlike Sounis’ frequently broken or smashed ones.

“Class credit,” Mr. Magus growled. “And none of your business.”

The elder of the two boys smirked at him. The younger was shooting worried glances between the three of them, but never at the armed and suited man that stood just a pace back and to the left of him. A bodyguard, Gen guessed, but he wasn’t sure for whom exactly. Maybe to make sure he didn’t bolt.

Mr. Magus had led him out of the Sounis College campus and skirted through the edge of Eddis’ campus, all with very little explanation, with the added bonus of threats about destroying Gen’s college career before it even started.

Gen had made sure Mr. Magus knew exactly how he felt about this, with constant hissed complaints, the whole way to the copse of pines. He hadn’t complained about the others that joined them outside Mr. Magus’ office until now, in the silence that followed Mr. Magus’ announcement that they were breaking into Attolia College.

“I can stay here,” the younger boy, Sophos, offered.

“No,” Mr. Magus and the bodyguard said at the same time.

“He’s old enough to need college credit?” Gen said, with mock doubt. The kid wasn’t much younger than him, maybe a year or two, and Gen was old for a freshman.

“Mr. Ambiades will stay here,” Mr. Magus said. Gen hated that he called them all that, _mister_ , like he’d managed to twist the honorific into some patronizing slight. “You call if you see anyone, do you understand?”

Ambiades nodded.

They left him under a tree, and crept toward the building.

“What are we doing, again?” Gen asked.

“There’s a flag in the basement somewhere,” Mr. Magus said, finally deigning to give him an actual answer. “I happen to know which section it’s in. There’s an old tri-college tradition that whoever has the flag holds majority vote for the shared land tract. Sounis needs to keep it from Mede University.”

Gen stopped dead in the middle of the grass.

“You’re insane,” he hissed.

“Mr. Gen,” Mr. Magus said, in a tone of condescending patience. “I know you’re young and yet uneducated, but that’s an insensitive remark.”

“No,” Gen said, digging his heels in. “I mean it. Clinical. Delusions or something. I saw the medicine in your pocket.”

That made Mr. Magus stop, and raise a scolding eyebrow.

“That’s private information,” he said, with some chill. “And it’s not neurological medication at all. It’s for a heart condition. If it _was_ for a mental health condition, that would be nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve a lot to learn. It’s good that you’re finally starting college classes.”

Sophos’ eyes widened to white in the dark, locking onto Mr. Magus with unmasked worry.

Mr. Magus turned to Sophos, and said gently, “It’s an old problem, and it runs in my family. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

Sophos looked relieved, and Gen was sour that his one good hit was now complicated by feeling guilty. He tried to smother this feeling.

“We need to keep moving,” the suited man, Pol, said.

“Can you find it or not?” Mr. Magus asked Gen directly.

“Oh, I can find it,” Gen said. “If it exists, that is.”

“It exists,” Mr. Magus said confidently.

“Then I can find it,” Gen said, annoyed.

He disabled the security panel beside the back door of the Attolia College building, and they followed him in.

* * *

The utility staircase Mr. Magus led them to went deep underground. They were on the second level of sub-basement when it ended at a brown door. He stopped and waited.

“Will Sounis keep Eddis from finishing the new field?” Gen asked, hushed on the poorly lit landing.

“Can you open it or not?” Mr. Magus asked impatiently, gesturing to the door.

“I’m hungry,” Gen said. “I think that granola bar had expired.”

“So, go to Applebee’s when we’re done,” Mr. Magus said without sympathy. “I’ll take you myself. Anything on the menu, if you will shut up, and go get the flag.”

“Do I get to go to Applebee’s?” Sophos asked.

Mr. Magus sighed, and Pol coughed. It sounded suspiciously like a hidden chuckle.

“Yes, for the love of the gods, yes, I will take everyone to Applebee’s if we get out of here _with the flag._ ”

“What if it isn’t there?” Gen hedged.

“Then Mede University steps in to help clean up the mess the former dean of Attolia left when his son murdered his sister-in-law, and then they negotiate with Attolia alone for leasing a few buildings, and then they trap us with conditional grants, and within ten years they’ll own all three campuses and use the buildings for an extension school.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Gen scoffed. “It’ll still be a school.”

Mr. Magus looked at him the way Gen thought he looked at bugs he’d found skittering across his kitchen floor.

“They’ll fire our professors during the takeover, hire adjuncts and assistant professors they underpay, and only offer remedial classes and one-hundred level classes. No community arts programs, no local sports, no 4H events, no theater. All the full professors with their wealth of knowledge, gone. They’ll put our libraries in stacks.

“Attolia, Eddis, and Sounis are community colleges, Gen. They always have been. They’ve lasted for decades and survived the commercialization of education. People’s livelihoods are here, resources for study, programs for the city we belong to. We’re small but we’re important. I don’t think the _disaster_ of Attolia’s dean appointment understands that. She was appointed out of spite, nothing more. The former dean’s family hated her and someone wanted to spit on them after the mess they’d left. She’s too young, and only sees things in terms of money.”

“Mede U wouldn’t get rid of Eddis,” Gen said sullenly, unwilling time see how much he was mulling over Mr. Magus’ perspective. “It’s mostly sports. Sports are always popular.”

“It wouldn’t last for long,” Mr. Magus said. “Not without Sounis and Attolia. It’ll hold out long enough, and then nobody who cares will be around anymore, and Mede U will take it, rebrand it, and pour all the money into football. It might survive as a pre-season camp. Nothing more.”

Sophos sneezed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, blushing. “It’s dusty. And creepy.”

Once distracted, Mr. Magus seemed to have no interest in continuing his lecture. He motioned impatiently at the door.

Gen rolled his eyes and knelt to fiddle with his lock picks. The tumblers fell into place and he tugged the door open, then peered into the darkness.

“We’ll wait here,” Mr. Magus said. “You have an hour, maybe two.”

“Thanks,” Gen said dryly.

“Pol,” Sophos said, when Gen slipped into the darkness. “What are you getting at Applebee’s?”


	3. Ethics in the Information Age

The flag was folded beneath a portrait of Ms. Hephestia, one of the tri-college founders. The portrait was propped leaning against a wall. Her eyes followed him in the dark wherever he moved, and it unnerved him immensely.

The flag itself was just faded layers of fabric, a curiously small bundle of thin material. He knew exactly where it would fly above each of the founders’ statues. The poles were always empty, neglected. The flag, folded on the floor, didn’t look like it would be especially significant-- just a tattered blue, green, and red swinging from a rusted pole on one of the campuses.

But it _felt_ important.

He tripped on a sculpture, glanced up to see Eugenides’ dark brown face, tilted as if the sculptor had known it would someday look down on him and molded the curve of the neck for that explicit purpose. The face had an encouraging smile, with a spark of delighted mischief in his painted eyes.

Gen scrambled to his feet and reached for the flag. He froze, staring at the portrait.

The room, lit by his flashlight and some distant security lights, was dusty and damp. He’d had to crawl through a basement ventilation access tunnel to get here, pick the padlock meant to keep adventurous students out, and find a door that had been papered over during some post-earthquake remodel. The furnaces in that room were long-cold and forgotten, the storage room behind the wallpaper even more so.

The portrait glittered in the flashlight beam, and he could have sworn she met his eyes directly. He snatched the flag and fled. A furnace creaked ominously as he sprinted by, his wet boots squelching as he ran. He slid down the tunnel like a runner sliding for home, his feet knocking into the grating he’d propped with a crowbar. It was stuck enough to rattle his teeth, but his momentum carried him through. He landed in the inches-deep muck of a poorly-draining A/C system in the sub-basement of the business school building.

Mr. Magus, Sophos, and Pol were waiting in the dark stairwell leading to the upper basement and ground floor. Gen fell through the door, more than walked through, and slapped the flag into Mr. Magus’ hand. It was just slightly larger than his palm.

It was Pol that propped him up against a railing and looked into his eyes, taking the bright flashlight and flicking it into and out of his line of vision.

“There must have been carbon monoxide down there,” Pol said. “He’ll be alright with some fresh air.”

“We need to get out of here anyway,” Mr. Magus said. “Before security finds us.”

“Are you okay?” Sophos asked Gen, when they crept up the stairs. Gen was leaning heavily on the railing but had shrugged off Pol’s help.

“I’m fine,” Gen snapped. “Did you learn anything?”

Sophos flushed, with a wounded frown, and left him alone.

The moon was bright, full and gleaming overhead, so when they snuck out the utility door, they could clearly see the half-dozen campus security officers on the lawn, waiting.

* * *

Gen curled up on the hard chair, hunched over his sore ribs. The security guards hadn’t expected a fight, or for any of them to run. Gen hadn’t expected to be tackled from behind. He hid his tears in his knees.

“My dad’s going to fire Pol,” Sophos moaned, from nearby.

“I’m going to kill Ambiades,” Mr. Magus said through his teeth.

Gen thought Mr. Magus was probably going to lose his job, too, and didn’t begrudge him the fury.

“Do you have the flag or did they take it?” Gen asked, voice muffled. He kept his face pressed against his knees, and held one hand to his side.

“They didn’t take–” Mr. Magus began, and then he swore quietly. Then, he swore more ferociously. He emptied out all his pockets. A pen, a wallet, and his medication were all he had. Security must have taken his phone before putting them in the little room, because Gen hadn’t taken it.

“Where is it?” Sophos asked, voice small.

“I must have dropped it in the scuffle,” Mr. Magus said, swearing again, this time with less heart. All the energy seemed to have drained out of him. “I’ll go back and look when I can, I guess. If I’m not banned from the campus.”

“I’ll help,” Gen offered, before he meant to speak. He had no idea why he’d offered.

“Thank you, Mr. Gen,” Mr. Magus said. “And I’m sorry. How’s your side?”

“Broken,” Gen said. He knew Mr. Magus would think he was overreacting, but he was pretty sure a couple ribs were cracked. The man sounded so genuinely apologetic, Gen felt bad adding anything to that.

There were footsteps in the hall and they all sat up straighter.

The door opened. The chief of campus security entered, followed by a woman in a sharp mulberry suit, with her dark hair tied back tightly from a pale face.

“Ms. Irene,” Mr. Magus said, rising to his feet.

Irene, the young dean of Attolia College, didn’t so much as look at him. She only looked at Gen.

“Come work for me,” she offered, before any introduction or greeting.

“I’ve got college plans,” he said. “A scholarship. A woman I love.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, derisively. “I’ll pay salary.”

“For _what_ ,” Mr. Magus exclaimed, bewildered.

“You’re beautiful,” Gen conceded. “But she’s kinder, and I don’t cheat.”

Irene turned on her heel and left, slamming the door behind them.

“Gen.” Mr. Magus sighed.

“You have a scholarship?” Sophos asked, with a touch of awe. “ _And_ a girlfriend?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Mr. Magus answered at the same time Gen said, “I didn’t say girlfriend.”

They looked at each other.

“I think my ribs are broken,” Gen said.

Mr. Magus swore again, rubbed his face with one hand, and then shook a single pill into his mouth.

Gen stood up, went to the window, and glared at it. He slipped a little screwdriver out of his pocket and fiddled with the casing of the window alarm. It detached without a sound.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You can’t be serious,” Mr. Magus said.

“Do we have to climb down?” Sophos stood on tiptoes to look out at the ground below the window.

“There’s a fire escape ladder,” Gen said. “Unless you want to wait for her to decide she wants to blackmail you into leaving the state?”

Mr. Magus regarded him seriously, and then nodded.

“Sophos, you go first. Gen won’t be able to hold on if you slip and fall.”

“What happens to _me_ if I fall?” Sophos asked.

“Don’t fall,” Mr. Magus instructed, pushing the window open another few inches and waving him through.

“You’re with me,” Gen said. “You won’t fall.”

* * *

“Ten more yards,” Gen panted, wheezing.

“That’s just Eddis campus!” Sophos said, pulling him by the arm.

“Gen, let me carry you,” Mr. Magus said, when Gen’s steps slowed to a stumbling trot. Sophos sprinted ahead, in fairly good shape despite looking like he’d only read about physical activity rather than actually doing any.

“No,” Gen wheezed. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

“Gen,” Mr. Magus said. He was leaving off the honorific now.

“Go,” Gen howled, clutching his ribs with one arm. “They won’t follow you onto Eddis’ campus. It’ll be trespassing.”

“I’m going to pick you up,” Mr. Magus said. Gen didn’t doubt that he could-- he might have been a dean’s assistant, but the man was built like a soldier. Maybe he was a vet.

Gen still wasn’t prepared to be scooped up in Mr. Magus’ arms. He squawked in protest, while being cradled like a helpless baby. He appreciated that he wasn’t thrown over the shoulder, where his ribs would have been agony, despite the cushion.

“What about your heart?” Sophos stopped to shout back, near tears.

Yells of security behind them were growing closer. Gen looked over Mr. Magus to see them gaining, but he was too winded to offer any warning.

“It’s not _that kind of heart problem_!” Mr. Magus shouted back. “For the love of the gods, Sophos, _go_!”

The running that Mr. Magus was managing while holding him was impressive, but it was jostling his poor ribs so much Gen wanted to lie in the grass and cry.

“Put me down,” Gen mumbled hoarsely. “Drop me.”

“Oh, shut up,” Mr. Magus huffed.

“I have a key card for the Eddis library,” Gen said, as they careened around a giant campus map. Sophos was keeping pace with them.

“Of course you do,” Mr. Magus grumbled, only a little winded as he slowed. Security guards were still behind them, yelling now at each other as they argued at the border of their own campus about whether or not to follow. They might decide to, and argue with Eddis staff about it later, or hope it was never noticed. They wouldn’t follow into a building, though.

“Next building,” Gen said. “Put me down.”

“Not on your life, kid,” Mr. Magus said. “Sophos, stop looking back.”

* * *

The library of Eddis College was in one of the oldest buildings on its campus. The top floor wasn’t part of the library-- it was administration. It hadn’t gotten the modern updates in decor that Sounis College Administration had, but it had been around long enough that it had swung back around to classic or vintage.

Gen sat in one of the cushioned chairs in the little lobby outside the dean’s office, waiting with Mr. Magus and Sophos. Sophos’ eyes were red-rimmed, but when Gen spared him a glance he thought it was more exhaustion than anything else.

Clicking footsteps announced the dean’s arrival before they could see her. She rounded the corner, an assistant on one side and one of her staff coaches on the other. It wasn’t until that moment that Gen saw her, in loose knits worn over workout clothes, in her sneakers, without makeup, that he realized what had been so strange about Irene. She looked like she’d never gone home for the night.

Helen, on the other hand, had clearly been pulled away from a late night run. She still had a little sweat dampening her temples, a shine on her crooked nose. Gen attempted to look chagrined.

“Oh, it’s you, Eugenides,” she sighed, stopping in front of them. Mr. Magus didn’t look as surprised as Gen was hoping, but Sophos’ expression was very satisfying.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Helen said, crossing her arms.

“Yes,” the coach at her side said. Gen shot him a furious glance. He hadn’t had a bed time anyone had been able to enforce since he was ten, and that was over twelve years ago.

Gen reached up and pulled the flag loose from where it was plastered flat against his chest, and draped it over Helen’s hand. She gaped at it for a second, then looked at him and really, truly smiled.

“You little _snake_ ,” Mr. Magus snarled softly.

“The founder’s flag, Dean Sounis’ assistant, and the dean’s nephew. You’ve had a busy night,” Helen said, shaking the flag out to see it. It was three bold stripes, with four symbols backed by black diamonds across the field.

Gen’s head snapped up. He leaned, wincing when his ribs screamed, to study Sophos.

“You?” he asked. “The dean is your _uncle_?”

“I thought you knew!” Sophos defended.

Gen sat back, stunned.

“It’s nothing,” Mr. Magus was saying to Helen. “It’s a flag and an antiquated tradition. Nobody will abide by it.”

“You would have argued for them to maintain the tradition,” Helen said, with a soft note of disapproval. Gen cringed, hearing the low and cushioned warning that Mr. Magus was sure to miss. Helen only sounded like that when she knew she could crush you.

“Yes,” Mr. Magus agreed. “But now we don’t have it.”

“We won’t either,” Helen said. “I’m giving it to the Hephestia Estate for the museum.”

“What?” Gen demanded, gasping in pain when he moved too quickly. He sat motionless and utterly silent for a long moment, bent over, and there was a hand on his shoulder. He tried to shrug it off but couldn’t quite make his shoulder obey.

“What happened?” the coach asked.

“Nothing,” Gen grumbled, his voice thinner than he wanted.

“Attolia security,” Mr. Magus said. “One of them tackled him.”

“We’re going to the ER,” the coach said. “Up.”

“Dad, I’m _fine_ ,” Gen tried to squirm away from the hand under his elbow, pulling him to his feet. He caught a glimpse of Helen’s frown and gave up.

“Oh,” Mr. Magus said, as if things were falling into place. “You’re the hockey coach.”

“Head of the athletics department,” the coach corrected. “ _And_ the hockey team coach.”

“Don’t you have tape in your office?” Gen balked.

“Move, sport.”

Gen was steered away by the heavy hand on his shoulder. He called back to Sophos, twisting to see behind him. “When do you start?”

“This fall,” Sophos said. “Poetry.”

“Sounis?”

“Where else?”

Mr. Magus was talking to Helen. Gen’s ears just made out him asking if he could hold the flag once more to study it and Helen politely but firmly declining.

Gen leaned on his father the second the elevator doors slid shut.

“What will she do with them?”

“Not press trespassing charges. They were with you. She’ll feed the Sounis kid too much candy and send them both home.” The coach towered over Gen, which made his broad chest a convenient place for weary heads. “Did you set off an alarm?”

Gen shook his head against the tracksuit fabric. “Nope. The little graduate assistant bastard with Mr. Magus tipped them off. I would have gotten out fine if it wasn’t for him. Easy-peasy.”

The coach made an affirmative rumbling sound in his throat. Gen knew it was all the praise he was likely to hear. His father didn’t hand out praise lightly.

“You made Helen happy,” he added, and Gen smiled.

That was enough.


	4. Classical Mechanics

_Three years later..._

Irene, the young dean of Attolia College, frowned at the small jewelry box in the center of her polished desk. The desk was covered in neat, orderly piles of papers, many of them colored coded with flags by her older secretary Phresine. She drummed polished, trimmed nails on the arm of her chair, then reached out and snapped the box shut. The lid hid the shining ruby teardrop earrings from view.

He’d been in her office. Again.

After Helen donated the flag to the family estate of Hephestia, for a museum upstate, she’d thought she wouldn’t hear again from Eugenides. The boy had been going into his freshman year at Eddis College-- Irene had gone as far as looking into what he was studying. His major was, unhelpfully, listed as “Independent Study.” He must have conned Helen into letting him assemble his own curricula of light classes, maybe for the access to the computer labs.

It was possible he’d _enrolled_ for access to the computer labs, that Helen had threatened to cut him off if he wasn’t a student. He could have been halfway through a master’s degree by the time he’d started as a freshman, if he’d started on time.

It shouldn’t have surprised her that he wasn’t focusing on computer science – she supposed a boy who could hack the encrypted files of Ornon National Bank and release them to expose tax evasion at 17 probably didn’t need a classroom to teach him his way around a computer. Still, somehow, she’d thought he might, even just to teach it someday. Or for the certification. Except she was quickly learning he didn’t care much what other people thought of his paper credentials, only the credentials of his results.

Results were something he kept producing, too. He’d never claimed responsibility for a few major things the past two years since he’d started classes at Eddis, or the dozens of smaller jobs he’d done. Officially, nobody knew it was him; unofficially, most people suspected. Irene was aware of the extent of his work because her PR man, Relius, somehow always found out. He made it his job to know.

Irene would have been more nervous, except she had nothing to hide. Eugenides tended to focus on exposing illegal activity, or merely things that annoyed him, and Irene’s records at Attolia College were neither.

Many of her tenured professors were waiting for him to expose such activity, though. She knew they didn’t trust her, and many of them thought she’d secured her position via illicit means. The mistrust was crippling morale at faculty meetings.

And now he was taunting her.

She knew the earrings must have come from him.

She didn’t know what to make of them-- was it a warning? A threat? An arrogant boy’s idea of showing off? A cruel joke about a bitter, failed marriage?

There was a possibility, Relius kept warning her, of someone bribing Eugenides to plant information to lead to her termination. She couldn’t ignore that possibility, even if it didn’t seem to fit his usual modus operandi. Everyone had a price.

The intercom on her desk buzzed and she didn’t startle. She’d trained herself early to hide her reactions, her emotions. It was the best way to make it in the male-dominated administration of academia.

She tucked the earring box into a drawer of her desk and pressed the button.

“Mr. Nahuseresh from Mede University is here for his appointment,” Phresine’s voice came through the speaker.

He was fifteen minutes early, as usual. She shouldn’t begrudge him the time when he was supplying her with loaned lab equipment and graduate assistants, but she resented the intrusion all the same. She had to keep sucking up, too, or he’d vanish along with the university’s aid.

“Send him in,” Irene said. “And bring some coffee.”

Eugenides was a problem for later.

* * *

Gen was in the janitorial closet catching his breath.

He shouldn’t have come back so soon. It had been months since he’d left the earrings on Irene’s desk, but still not enough time. He should have waited until the next semester.

There was a bewildered night class on the opposite side of the building, collecting their notes and wondering why the graduate assistant teaching accounting had dropped his dry erase marker and fled out the door at the sight of campus security.

The jig, he thought, was up.

He quickly unscrewed the vent cover and slipped inside the broad vent. It was wide for a vent, but not for a body. He rued the days he’d cursed being short, and now cursed the extra inches he’d gained since highschool, thanks to a late growth spurt. He was still small, but not small enough to crawl as easily over the sheet metal.

Voices from the hall told him security had caught up to him. They’d do a sweep of every room along the corridor, and he needed to be somewhere else, fast. He angled around a corner and braced his feet on the wall, and when there was a lucky clatter of mop sticks to cover the noise, he shoved himself down the vent.

The metal creaking was cacophonous. His only hope was that he didn’t have far to go-- this vent opened on the chasm of an elevator shaft. He swung out, looking up and down to find the elevator, and then began ascending hand over hand up the cable. They’d have men crawling the ground floor, so his best hope was the roof.

Then, he heard faint pinging.

Someone was getting on the elevator.

It was old, and slow, but he really didn’t want to risk even a second longer in the shaft than he had to. He swung into the first vent he reached, clattering noisily, cursing under his breath the whole time.

This was the opposite of ideal. It had been a while since he’d gotten himself into a situation with this little margin. The elevator had frightened him more than he’d wanted to admit-- he wasn’t exactly sure now which floor he was on.

It was late, though, he reminded himself, taking calming breaths. Most of the building was deserted, and this high up it was mostly offices.

He shimmied down the vent as silently as he could (very), and tested vent plates as he passed them, experimenting to see if he could find one loose.

And then, the gods smiled on him.

The third vent wasn’t just loose. It was already missing two screws. The whole side bowed out when he pressed; the room it led to was dark. He worked his legs around, cutting off his view, and pressed with both feet.

It gave with a little pop, and he slid out into the office.

The light flicked on.

Irene was sitting at her desk, extremely unamused.

“Oh, hello,” he said, from where he was on the carpet on his back. He rolled to his feet. “Just passing by.”

“Sit,” she said. “Teleus is already on his way up.”

“Tell him I said hi,” Gen offered, edging toward the window. He could climb onto the ledge, creep halfway around the building, make the leap to the lower roof and vanish onto Eddis’ campus.

“Sit,” Irene ordered. “If you run, you’ll regret it.”

“You’re the only one who ever catches me,” Gen said, knowing he was out of time.

Irene said nothing to that.

The stomp of frustrated men approached.

There was a firm knock on the thick oak door. Her whole office was cut off from the rest of the building-- no interior windows, no inset in the door. They couldn’t see who was knocking but Gen didn’t doubt her when she said it was her chief of campus security.

“Come in,” she called, her voice pitched to carry.

Gen flinched, feet rooted to the floor. There was no way to work the stiff window casing open in the second the door was opening.

Teleus entered the room, followed by three of his staff, and another man. It was Mr. Nahuseresh, the Mede University administrator that had been overseeing grants to the small college.

“Mr. Nahuseresh,” Irene said, standing. “What a pleasure to see you here.”

She sounded so syrupy that Gen couldn’t help but shoot her a disbelieving glance. Her focus wasn’t on him, for a moment, and his gaze darted to Nahuseresh next. The man was eating it up, hook, line, and sinker.

Maybe she _did_ mean it. Gen was unsettled to find he wasn’t actually certain.

“I was just on my way through,” Mr. Nahuseresh said. “I thought I’d stop by and see if you needed anything, after I saw all the activity in the building.”

“Just a little trespassing problem,” Irene assured him. “We’ll take care of it. Thank you so much for checking in.”

“Of course,” Mr. Nahuseresh smiled. Gen entertained the brief fantasy of spitting into his eyes. Then, the Mede admin looked at him. “Oh, is this your little hacker?”

“He isn’t mine,” Irene said smoothly. “He’s one of Helen’s strays.”

The dismissal hurt more than Gen could have possibly anticipated. He ducked his head, hoping it was disregarded as shame or fury.

There was a long, awkward silence. Irene seemed to be waiting for Mr. Nahuseresh to politely excuse himself, and he seemed disinclined to do so. Finally, she cleared her throat.

“Eugenides,” she said, and it was so cold, he regretted nearly everything. “Do you know what the federal penalty for criminal hacking is?”

His mouth went dry.

She went on, merciless, forcing him to listen.

“Just one offense resulting in more than $500 in damages is one to five years in prison. Up to twenty for more.”

Twenty. She wouldn’t give him to the feds unless she had enough to make sure it stuck, and if they could make anything stick, they could get up to twenty. That almost as long as he'd been alive.

He swallowed. He wouldn’t crack, not in front of her.

Twenty years.

“I can work for you,” he blurted out. “I’ll withdraw from Eddis. I can help.”

“That wasn’t,” she said icily, “a standing offer.”

He’d only managed to make her more angry.

Mr. Nahuseresh had worked his way across the room to stand beside Irene, and now he interrupted.

“What a shame,” he said, when Teleus started forward. “Such a young man, with so much promise. Surely, there’s some alternative?”

Gen’s belly went cold.

Mr. Nahuseresh leaned to whisper in Irene’s ear, and after several long seconds, she nodded. She held up a hand to stop Teleus.

“Mr. Nahuseresh has offered to contact a friend in the local authorities. We can arrange house arrest, and an internet and technology ban, indefinitely. In the community’s best interest.”

Gen was going to puke all over her honey-golden carpet. No internet? Years of cultivated skills, wasted. No future he could imagine. Coming back to Attolia College was one of the stupidest things he’d ever done in his life. They had him pinned and they knew it, he knew it.

“Please,” he said, voice cracking. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

Even while he begged, his eyes flicked toward the vent.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, unmoved. “We’ll just catch you in the hall.”

Gen dove for the vent anyway, and slipped in just ahead of Teleus’ grasping hands. He shoved himself forward. Every vent on this floor went into a room that emptied into the hall except one.

The elevator.

If they laid a hand on him, she’d follow through. He had seen it in her eyes. If he disappeared tonight, laid low, she’d maybe cool off. He could run, vanish, leave the tri-college campuses altogether.

The vent ended abruptly, and like last time, he had to let his momentum carry him into the open air to grab the cable.

He’d forgotten that his hands had grown slick with sweat. They cost him that crucial second of stabilizing himself, and without a handhold, the cable was useless.

Eugenides fell.


	5. Social Psychology

Irene sat in the frigid hospital hallway, away from the waiting room where Eugenides’ father and his cousin Helen were talking in low, worried tones. There were several others with them– Eugenides had a large family, it appeared. 

She didn’t know what she was waiting for, or why she was still there.

Everytime she closed her eyes, the thick _crunch_ of a body hitting unforgiving metal filled her head in crescendoing echoes. He hadn’t screamed. She wished he had. 

She had seen his eyes when she’d threatened to turn him over to the feds. They’d dulled with defeat, but he would have gone with Teleus, she thought. It wasn’t until, in her fury at his attempt to con her into letting him off the hook– like he really meant to work for her, what a joke– that she’d listened to Nahuseresh and it had gone south.

The defeat quickened to sheer terror, and panic. It had driven him to make one final, desperate escape. She didn’t know what had happened, exactly, in the elevator shaft at the end of the vent, but somehow he had fallen. 

This was her fault and she felt ill, and then furious at him for putting her in the position, by turns. 

Nobody spoke to her. 

Once, a middle-aged man who had Eugenides’ chin and nose walked by, then returned with coffee. He pretended she wasn’t there. 

After a while, a doctor came to the waiting room and Eugenides’ father left with him.

Irene waited. 

At the college, Teleus had pried the top of the elevator open and reported with some relief that Eugenides was breathing. An ambulance and the police had come, and Irene was horrified to realize that Eugenides was conscious when they moved him down onto a stretcher. He hadn’t cried out when falling, but he had cried then– helpless, pathetic sobs, mingled with mumbled, foreign phrases. Later, in her car, driving alone to the hospital after the ambulance, she remembered where she’d heard them before: it was a prayer.

She had gone to the hospital because she didn’t know what else to do. Mr. Nahuseresh had disappeared before emergency services arrived, and Teleus had gone to oversee a shift change. There was nothing they could do, anyway. Nothing _she_ could do.

Still, she sat and waited.

Irene was so motionless she didn’t notice at first the boy approaching from the waiting room. She looked up when scuffed chelsea boots entered her line of vision. The boy ran a hand through wavy blond hair, and held out a package of trail mix. 

“It’s from the vending machine,” he said.

Irene didn’t take it.

He looked over his shoulder, like he was afraid of someone watching from behind, then turned back to her.

“You probably don’t remember me,” he said.

“Sophos. Dean Sounis’ nephew,” Irene said.

“Yeah,” he said, with a little smile, as if being remembered at all pleased him. “I’m Gen’s roommate.”

“I didn’t know Eugenides had a roommate,” Irene replied. This was true. “Much less one enrolled at Sounis.”

“I live off-campus,” Sophos said, almost apologetically. “And he’s not _really_ my roommate. Technically, he is, but it’s mostly just so he can use the address. He really lives at the library.”

“He’s a busy young man,” Irene said, accepting the trail mix. She had no intention of eating it. She had no appetite, and actually wanted to throw it. Preferably followed by several heavier objects. Instead, she clutched it in her hand. 

“Oh, no, I mean he _lives_ there,” Sophos said. “He’s got a room and everything. He just can’t use it as an address. He does come by our place sometimes, though.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Irene asked bluntly, looking at him. He flushed from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears, and shrugged.

“Dunno. Gen likes you, and I felt bad you were all alone out here. I’m going crazy waiting for news.”

“Eugenides doesn’t like me,” Irene said. 

Sophos’ mouth twisted in a doubtful purse of his lips. “I think he does. I mean, he’s never said it, but he doesn’t really say much about himself if you really listen.”

“Sophos,” Irene said, cutting him off. “Eugenides and I hate each other. Go wait somewhere else.”

“Sorry I bothered you,” he mumbled, and he nearly knocked the chair over standing up so fast. He went back to the waiting room and Irene was flooded with another wave of new regret.

Police came a few minutes later, sounding stern despite the claim that they just had some questions. Irene sat up straighter, realizing they were likely to charge her with something. It could be the end of her career. Though her insides were roiling, her face betrayed nothing. It was stone. 

“Ms. Irene?” one of them asked, to confirm.

“Yes.” She didn’t stand. 

“We’re just wrapping things up, and we wanted to know if you want to press charges.”

Irene’s mind went blank for a single, black second. She now regretted not calling Relius after all, and thinking this was a personal problem and not something to drag him out of bed for. Asking questions would be a mistake, she knew that much. Talking at all would probably be unwise.

The police officer looked impatient, and didn’t wait for her to collect and organize her thoughts. 

“The kid said he’d broken into your office. I have to ask if you want to press charges.”

She’d threatened him, threatened to possibly hide actual crimes from the appropriate authorities in order to hurt him with something dubious and personal. Had he said nothing? Did he remember?

“No,” Irene said faintly. “Do you know how he is?”

The police officer looked at his partner, and then back to her, with faked discomfort. She recognized the falseness of it.

“I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to share that. You’re welcome to ask his family, but I wouldn’t bother them right now, especially if you might reconsider filing.”

“Thank you,” Irene said, automatically. The waiting room was quiet, but still full. 

Suddenly, she was angry. She hadn’t had to come. Instead of offering any information, they’d sent the youngest boy to fumble through a pointless discussion with her. Eugenides had broken into _her_ office, more than once, and been a general pest in the area for years. 

One dance, long ago, meant nothing. She’d made it mean nothing.

She left.


	6. Pathophysiology

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mind the trigger warnings for this chapter, dears:
> 
> mentions of canonical character death, grief, hospital setting, consensual use of NG tubes for recovery. no gore, no detailed descriptions of medical procedures-- just the setting of a hospital room where someone is trying to get better.

They were supposed to discharge Eugenides at the end of the first week. The concussion had healed enough, he’d had the first surgery, and he was supposed to wait at home for the next. 

He spiked a fever the morning of the hoped-for discharge date, and Gen’s father, Nikomedes, stood helplessly at the back of the room while a nurse started a stronger antibiotic. 

Gen’s father left the room when they debrided the infected surgical site and placed a drain. He’d thought he could handle it and then at the last second left to sit in the hallway and stare at the opposite wall.

One week turned into two, into three and then four. It seemed Gen’s body would fight off one infection just to pave the way for the next. He slept most of the time and gazed listlessly at nothing in particular when he was awake. They fell into the habit of staring at walls together. 

An NG tube pumped nutrients into him when he was too ill and weak to eat. He shivered under blankets, including the few Nikomedes brought from home. His father slept on a chair in the room, a narrow recliner that left a persistent crick in his neck. 

Some days, Helen would stop by, or one of Gen’s many cousins, or siblings. They’d convince Nikomedes to go home, to shower and eat and sleep. He’d always be back within twenty-four hours. They didn’t push too hard– Gen was the baby, after all.

Gen was the one who looked like his mother.

Then, the fifth week, his fever came down and didn’t spike back up. His breathing and heart rate leveled out; he managed to sit up and drink broth. 

Nikomedes had been desperate for him to be well enough to go home, but when the doctor doing morning rounds said they’d have discharge papers by the end of the day, it felt far too soon. Gen couldn’t stand for more than a minute, he was barely talking, his arm was in a thick cast hiding tender surgery scars. 

He bundled Gen into the car like he was a baby, feeling keenly the absence of his wife. She would have known what to do, how to cradle Gen against her chest like he was a child and not only five years from thirty, how to stroke his hair and murmur things that made him laugh despite his ravaged health. 

Gen slept in the passenger seat on the way home and didn’t see his father cry. It had been a while since the ache of missing her had sunk its claws quite so deep. Maybe it was remembering the tiny head of dark hair against a beige infant car seat, when they’d taken Gen home all those years ago. Maybe it was remembering a moment, vivid despite the years, of her hand checking a small boy’s forehead for fever in their kitchen. Had it been Gen, then? Or Temanus? He couldn’t remember which little face– only hers, lit by the recessed cabinet lights, pinched with concern.

Nikomedes’ face was dry by the time he parked in front of the house.

He carried Gen inside, to a bed Gen’s sister had made up in the den. There were containers of soup and a casserole in the fridge, ‘get well soon’ drawings in childish scrawl from Gen’s nephews and nieces on the table. 

Gen fell asleep again almost immediately. Nikomedes sat at the kitchen table, ran a calloused finger over the smooth wax marks of crayon on the nearest paper, then he put his face in his hands and exhaled one long, shuddering breath. It was not the first time in the past month he’d had the realization that he’d never really stopped pressing resolutely forward after she died. He’d never been the type to sit around with his hands empty.

For the first time, in the house so quiet he could hear the clock in the hallway ticking, he wondered what that had done to Eugenides. Gen had been so young, so tender and furious. He’d gone to his grandfather like a spit of storm dashing itself against a mountain, and his father had let him go. His own pain had been too raw, too bewildered, to cradle his son’s broken heart without crushing it.

The others seemed to take solace in his constancy. Only Gen had regarded it as some personal failing. For all he knew, it was. Maybe if he’d been a better father, a better widower, Gen wouldn’t have ended up crawling around in vents, one slip-up away from prison or death. 

Gen was wild, he was obstinate. Trying to hold on to him was like trying to gather smoke in cupped hands. For a fleeting second, it might seem to be captured, but it was only ever an illusion, a breath away from soaring out of reach.

Yet, Gen kept coming back to him. When his father-in-law, Gen’s grandfather, had died of a fall down some stairs after Parkinson’s destroyed his balance, Gen had disappeared. No one knew where he was for weeks, until one morning Nikomedes had come down the stairs and found Gen sitting at this same kitchen table, drinking coffee like he’d never left. 

He hadn’t known what to do, other than cup Gen’s face roughly in his hands, press his forehead to Gen’s forehead, and breathe hoarsely: “Next time, leave a note.”

Gen had nodded. He hadn’t jerked away from the pressure on his forehead, or the gentle squeeze on the back of his neck. They’d sat at the table and eaten eggs Nikomedes fried with tomato slices. Gen had moved into the library not long after that, to Helen’s delight and annoyance. She’d asked Nikomedes, not to intervene but for his advice, and he’d told his niece the thing he knew best about his son: You can’t make him do anything.

Perhaps this should have stung more bitterly, his failure as a parent. In truth, he was proud of Gen and terrified by him. There was a drive in him that even Temanus didn’t have, that was absent in Stenides despite his meticulous honing of craft. Gen was something beyond them, all of them, and this frightened Nikomedes like he was the child: how on earth did he help Gen put himself back together now, when Gen had always been a wonder obscure to him? Infuriating, maddening, but a wonder nonetheless. 

There was a knock on the front door and then the sound of it opening. He listened intently. Familiar footsteps went into the den. Melitta’s voice was gently teasing, answered by Gen’s sleepy mumble. A moment later, she entered the kitchen with two plastic sacks and dropped them on the counter.

“Agathe said she left some dinners,” she said, as a greeting. She swept by with some cans for the pantry and paused to kiss him on the cheek. He grumbled an acknowledgment.

“Is Gen alright?” he asked.

“He’s got his face buried in a book already,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s reading it or just absorbing it. I’d check it for drool later, if I were you.” 

Melitta peered inside the kettle and washed it out before filling it with water and setting it to heat.

“You could get an electric kettle,” she said, hands on her hips while she surveyed the kitchen, looking for something else to do.

“Hm,” he answered, non-committal. “Are the kids here?”

“No, not today. I didn’t want them climbing all over Gen. They won’t understand. Linos took them to the park. I’ll stay and make dinner, and I promised Agathe I’d finish cleaning the upstairs. She didn’t get to it yesterday, because Alexis had dance class.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, frowning.

“Oh, shh,” she scolded. “Mom would have a fit if we didn’t help, and beside that, we all want to. Syntyche said to call her if you need anything else from the store, she’ll run out tomorrow. And Sophos called me three times asking what Gen needs from the apartment, so call him or let me know what Gen wants. He’ll come spend the day here if you need to go out.”

Nikomedes listened to her chatter as she bustled around, chopping vegetables and trimming pieces of chicken. She set a cup of tea in front of him and he drank it with murmured thanks.

Melitta set a lid on the simmering pot and washed her hands, drying them on the blue kitchen towel. 

“That should be fine without watching,” she said. “I’m going up to clean. You don’t have to sit in here.”

Nikomedes didn’t move.

She had already gone down the hall, but she came back, leaned her hip on the door jamb and lowered her voice.

“Dad? You okay?”

“Your mother,” he said, and then he stopped, because he couldn’t condense it into words, and he didn’t want to put it on the shoulders of his daughter. 

Melitta came over, pulled a chair out, and sat in it.

She put her hand over his, on the table. 

“Mom wouldn’t blame you for this,” she said softly. “She knew how Gen is, even when he was little. She used to complain about him, about how fearless he was. Agathe and I hated it because we knew it was really bragging. I resented him because I thought he was the favorite.”

“Your mother loved all of you,” Nikomedes said, automatically. 

Melitta laughed, and propped her chin on one hand, elbow on the table. Her fingers curled around her cheek, and she smiled at him. Her eyes were bright with tears. 

“And we loved her. I grew up. I have Kosmas and Lykos now. I understand. And I understand that we don’t understand Gen, not the way she did. He’s private, and sensitive– and he loves you because you won’t coddle him, or make a fuss. It’s what he needs right now.”

She exhaled.

“Listen to me, going on and on, like you don’t know all of this already. Agathe says I treat everyone like a student. It drives her up the wall.” 

Nikomedes smiled at her, tired and grateful, and finished his tea. He stood, bent to kiss the top of her head, and said simply, “I don’t know everything. Thank you, Bee.”

“I’ll be upstairs,” she said, wiping her eyes, as she rose. 

Nikomedes took a bottle of water with a straw to the den, to replace the one he’d left earlier. He took another dose of painkillers. Gen had a thin paperback in his left hand, his eyes half-closed. He stirred slightly, with a small flinch, as his father came in. Obediently, he swallowed the meds and sipped the water.

There was a shelf of recorded games and a pile of binders. Nikomedes took the binders in one arm, put a disc in the player, and sat on the chair nearest Gen’s couch. He began taking notes on the last season’s hockey games, consulting binders as he went, and Gen watched with him for a moment and then fell back asleep. 

Nikomedes paused the game and watched him, watched the gentle rise and fall of Gen’s chest, reassured.


	7. Intro to Sports Journalism

The worst part of visiting Gen while he was sick was Gen, just like the best part of visiting Gen while he was sick was Gen. Sophos was always happy to see him, but these days Gen could be so withdrawn it was scary. If he wasn’t withdrawn, he was bitter in a way he’d never been around Sophos before.

Sophos curled up in an armchair, the remote in his hand.

“We don’t have to watch it,” he said, for the second time. 

“I don’t care,” Gen said. “Watch whatever you want.”

Sophos turned the TV off. That got Gen to lift his head.

“Are you going to sulk now?” he asked acidly. 

“No,” Sophos said, with the patience he usually reserved for his sisters. “I’m going to read.”

There was silence from the lump on the couch.

“Do you want me to read to you?” Sophos ventured, after reading the first page in his book twice.

Gen made a noise that Sophos took to mean yes, and then Gen looked at him again.

“Why are you wearing that?” 

The hockey helmet at least hid some of the blush. Sophos toyed with a corner of the book, flipping the pages rapidly. 

“Your dad said I could,” Sophos mumbled rapidly. 

“You asked my dad if you could wear one of the old helmets he has lying around,” Gen said, struggling to process.

“Yes,” Sophos said, more loudly than he’d intended. He didn’t take the helmet off. There was a silence. “Do you want one, too?”

Gen looked at him like he’d grown another head.

“Why?”

“I dunno.” Sophos shrugged. “Don’t they make you feel kinda, well, safe?”

“They make me feel like I’m about to be checked by one of my bigger cousins,” Gen said, dropping his head back down. He picked at a loose thread on the blanket and sighed. “What are you reading?”

“The Boys of Winter,” Sophos said, closing the book with his finger in place. “I found it on the table.”

Gen buried his face in a pillow.

“It’s about a hockey team,” Sophos said, helpfully. “I think it’s–”

“I know what it’s about,” Gen said, voice muffled. “I’m working on not throwing something.”

“You could,” Sophos offered. “I’d go get whatever you threw.”

With a hiss of displeasure, Gen staggered to his feet, clutching the blanket around his shoulders with his good arm. He stopped to lean close to Sophos’ face and bite the words off one at a time: “You are _too nice_ and it’s unnatural and I hate it.”

Sophos blinked.

Gen stomped out of the room, his steps noticeably slowing once he was in the hallway. It made Sophos’ gut twist, the audible reminder of how weakened Gen still was. He got up to trail after him, just in case. He could usually make it around the house pretty well, but Sophos didn’t know for certain what the stomping had taken out of him.

Upstairs Gen went, into a room at the end of a hall. It was the room he’d shared with his brothers, once. Inside, there was still a bunkbed, and a small desk covered with paper and pens. The papers had messy script, sometimes the alphabet, and sometimes copied lines from books. It was in a childish, squared-off hand.

“Have you been practicing?” Sophos asked, glad for the sign of life.

“No,” Gen said sharply. “Those aren’t my pens.”

Sophos left the papers alone. 

At a narrow bookcase, Gen stopped, and sagged to a cross-legged position on the floor. The blanket slid down to encircle him like a fabric moat. When he lifted his right arm, in the cast, first, Sophos pretended not to notice. 

He thumbed a book off the shelf and handed it to Sophos. 

“Don’t read books my father leaves lying around. He’s trying to corrupt you.”

“Corrupt me?” Sophos echoed. “How?”

Gen glared meaningfully at the helmet. Sophos was still wearing it. He shrugged and sat down on the carpet to look at the book. 

After a moment, Gen slid down even more, to curl up on the floor with the blanket. Sophos glanced at him and reached over to clutch a handful of comforter and drag it off the bunk bed. 

Wordlessly, Gen scooted onto the thicker blanket to cushion the floor. Sophos patted his head and smiled at the annoyed huff. 

“Is Redwall just for me or should I read aloud?” Sophos asked.

“I’m asleep,” Gen said. “Do whatever you want.”

Sophos leaned over him and poked his ear. “You used to be better at lying.”

“I used to be better at a lot of things,” Gen said. “Not the least of which was having two functional hands.”

With a frown, Sophos slumped back against the wall and then kicked at one of Gen’s feet. Gen moved his foot. Sophos tried again, and this time, Gen rolled over and kicked back. 

For a minute the only sound in the room was scuffling as they kicked each other’s feet and shins, harder and faster every second, until Sophos noted the strain around Gen’s mouth and called out “Uncle!” before flopping over out of reach. Gen wouldn’t give up until his body gave out on him, and Sophos didn’t want to push him that hard. Ragged laughter replaced the scuffling.

The face guard on the mask kept Sophos’ cheek from the carpet, and it fogged slightly with the angle of his breath across the floor. Gen laughed and exhaled noisily. 

“I _hate_ you,” he said, catching his breath.

Sophos nudged him in the hip with his foot.

“I don’t hate you,” Gen amended. “I hate _this_.”

“I know,” Sophos said quietly. He twisted around so he and Gen could see each other’s faces across a few feet of beige carpet. “Me too. It sucks.”

“The worst part is…” Gen said, turning his face to bury it in blanket. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Never mind.”

Sophos didn’t press. He flipped the book open and started reading. 

When he finished the first chapter, he prodded Gen to see if he’d fallen asleep.

“I’m awake,” Gen said, irritably.

Sophos swallowed nervously, feeling the blush creep up his neck before he’d even asked the question. He cleared his throat. “Do you think Helen would mind if I wrote her letters?”

With slow intentional movement, Gen raised his head to stare at him. 

“What? Like fan mail?”

“No!” Sophos stammered. “I mean, not exactly. It could kind of be like, well, I meant like, letters. Letters she might reply to, but she doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to, she can just read them. Or, she doesn’t even have to read them, just, would she mind getting them? I know her address, or do you think I should send them to her office? Or alternate, so it’s like, a surprise, and–”

Sophos stopped. Gen had a devilishly pleased expression gracing his face. He pushed himself up with his left arm.

“Are you offering to stalk my cousin?”

“No!” Sophos burst out, burying the face panel of the hockey helmet in his hands. “Shut up, shut up, forget I said anything.”

“I don’t know if Helen wants letters or not,” Gen said, and he sounded sincere. “You should write one and find out.”

“Yeah?” Sophos asked. “Okay. Okay, I can do that.”

“I don’t understand what goes on in your head,” Gen said frankly. 

“Helen is amazing,” Sophos protested.

“Of _course_ she is, she’s _Helen_. I just don’t know what you want to write _letters_ for.”

“I’m old-fashioned,” Sophos said. “I don’t see where you get off making fun of me for writing letters while you have that _ancient_ phone.”

“My Nokia is a _perfect device_ ,” Gen retorted. “Smart phones are too easy to hack or steal data from. I wouldn’t carry one unless it was bait.”

“But you’ve never told me not to carry one,” Sophos said, slightly accusing.

The smile Gen gave him was lazily wolffish, tinged with that new bitterness even in a joke.

“How do you think I keep track of where you are?”

Sophos hoped it was a joke.

He opened the book. “Chapter two.”


	8. Administrative Scheduling Methodology

The private phone in Helen’s desk drawer vibrated against a tray of paperclips, making them rattle against gray plastic. She checked the time and opened the drawer– it was Eugenides’ number. She answered.

“You have to get me out of here,” he said, before she even said hello.

“Out of where?” Helen asked, her concern taking a backseat to her radar for Gen’s dramatic nature.

“Here. The house. If you don’t come, I’m going to walk into the woods and who knows where I’ll end up.”

Helen smiled and leaned back in her chair. She didn’t think Gen was capable of getting lost even if he wanted to. Once, during a family camping trip to a lake island, Gen had followed Helen and the other older cousins to a sandy cove on the island side opposite of the cabin site, where they drank smuggled cheap beer and played volleyball. When Helen had woke in the middle of the night miserable with cramps, it had been little Gen who crept down to the beach and led her back to the grownups through the pitch black woods, holding her hand the whole way. He hadn’t even had a flashlight. 

She wondered if he’d ever known why she was hunched over near the fire, or if he’d just assumed she was sick. He couldn’t have been younger than thirteen or fourteen, to her seventeen. He was just young enough to be excluded by the older cousins and his siblings. 

“Gen. I’m at work,” Helen said. “I can’t just leave.”

“Tell Xanthe you don’t feel well,” Gen said. “I’m not joking, Helen, I need you to come get me.”

Something in his voice, in the insistence, made her sit up. The hair on her arms raised, and she could feel prickles at the back of her neck.

“Eugenides? What’s going on?”

“I’ll be in the tree fort,” he said.

“Don’t you dare climb up to–” Helen said, standing. It was no use. He’d hung up. She swore and dropped the phone on her desk, pressed a hand over her eyes. There was a meeting in two hours with the science faculty. 

On her way by Xanthe’s desk, she said, “Go to the faculty meeting today and take notes for me. I’ll review their concerns when I come in tomorrow.”

Xanthe nodded, looking mildly surprised but not asking for specifics. 

The drive to Uncle Nikomedes’ house wasn’t long. He preferred living close to campus, and had inherited his own father’s house. Helen’s father had declined the smaller, older family home, letting it pass to his younger brother. 

The treehouse in the backyard was one Helen’s father and Nikomedes had built, that Temanus had repaired and claimed until Gen forcibly evicted him. Temanus never admitted that it had happened, or ever breathed a word about how Gen had done it– the official story was that Temanus had outgrown it. 

Helen knew better.

She also knew that Gen, desperate for his own space, had started creeping out his window and leaping from roof to tree branch so he could crawl into the fort and sleep there. Helen had a vivid memory of sitting beside her aunt, whose arms opened to accept the blanketed bundle from Uncle Nikomedes, one chilled late autumn night when they realized Gen was outside and too stubborn to come in. He’d been half-frozen, wrapped up on his mother’s lap, while Helen scolded him before his mother even could.

Helen turned the car into the drive and cut the engine. The house was dim, and Uncle Nikomedes’ car wasn’t there. She went around to the back rather than knocking.

The plank ladder rung nailed into place on the tree didn’t give when she kicked it lightly to test. 

“I’m coming up,” she warned. 

The boards were worn smooth with use. The box of a tree fort was smaller than she remembered, but otherwise unchanged. A crate of pocket field guides with curling edges sat in one corner. 

Gen sat on the other. His hair was damp.

Helen crawled across the floor and sat next to him, tucking a tangled lock of hair behind his ear. It was slick with soap. He sighed, a little sound that pierced her heart.

“An emergency,” she said, dryly.

“I fought with Agathe,” he said.

“That’s happened before,” Helen said, bemused. “I’m sure it’ll happen again.”

“I made Phillipos and Corinna cry,” Gen said, into his sleeve. “And Alexis, I think.”

“All three?” Helen asked, doubtful. Usually, Gen’s niece and nephews adored him. She didn’t think he’d ever upset them before, not deeply. 

“Yes,” Gen said miserably, snapping. “All three of them. Agathe was ready to murder me, I could see it in her eyes.”

“What happened?” Helen asked. She silenced the phone buzzing in her pocket.

“I don’t know,” Gen said, sounding choked and angry. “It was Agathe. I know how she is, she’s always been that way. She came over and made lunch and then said she was washing my hair, and it’s felt so gross that I said yes even though I knew it was a bad idea, and she keeps telling me I need to accept help sometimes but then she _wouldn’t shut up_ about giving up childish pranks and settling down and growing up and…I don’t know, I was gritting my teeth one second and then screaming at her the next. I threw the shampoo bottle, I wouldn’t let her finish rinsing my hair. I only stopped because Phillipos started crying and Corinna joined him. I slammed the door on my way out and ten minutes later, she left.”

Gen buried his eyes in his sleeve. His shoulders were trembling, still thin from losing weight in the hospital. He’d already been lithe, and now the bones jutted like razors, all sharp angles. Helen put a hand on his back and he sniffled.

“I’m the worst,” he said. “And I proved her right– I threw a tantrum like a child and I _hate_ letting her be right. Now she’s going to whine to Melitta and she’ll tell Temanus and he’ll tell Stenides and they’ll all be furious with me– or worse. They might just decide I’m fragile porcelain and tiptoe around me. Gods. I need a glass of wine.”

Helen rubbed small circles between his shoulder blades and he leaned against her, head resting on her propped up knees.

“You’d tell me if I was the worst, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“Eugenides, you _are_ the worst,” Helen answered immediately. His soapy hair was leaving a damp spot on the knees of her pants. She didn’t care much– it would dry. “You called me out of work.”

He huffed a noise of annoyance.

“You wanted a break,” he said. She rubbed a thumb at the base of his neck and he sighed. 

“I did,” she admitted. “Will you come inside and have a glass of wine with me? Or should we go somewhere else?”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. “I have surgery tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said, things clicking into place. It wouldn’t do Gen any good for her to dissect it now, so she left the insights alone. “Well, a drive then?”

“Yes,” Gen said. “And Target. I need some apology Legos.”


	9. Communication in Patient Care

For a moment in the dark, Nikomedes simply breathed. He’d woken suddenly from a restless sleep full of fragmented dreams, like a shattered mirror with snatches of real life distorted in the shards. He strained to listen, suspecting that it was just the groans of the old house shifting and settling that had pricked him to consciousness. 

Then, he heard a soft exhale. He turned, propping himself up on one elbow, to look at the bedroom doorway. A silhouette was there, leaning.

“Eugenides?” he asked softly into the dark.

There was a long silence, the hushed sandpaper sound of breath over dry lips.

“Can you,” Gen said, voice low. “Can you…”

Nikomedes sat up, grabbing for the tee he’d thrown on her side of the bed. He pulled it on, heart dense with dread, and stood.

“Help,” Gen finally managed. “I need help.”

Nikomedes couldn’t remember the last time Gen had directly asked for his help. Even when he accepted it, it was indirectly, or offered first and grudgingly received. Since he was small, he was determined to be as solitarily capable as possible. It had been a great source of tension and frustration for a man who had raised four other children with the fundamental value of _teamwork_.

Gen was not a team player.

“What’s wrong?” Nikomedes asked, reaching him. He flicked on the light, hunting for some sign. Gen flinched away from the brightness. Nikomedes saw the problem, then, though he didn’t understand at first. 

His hair was a disaster. His _scalp_ was a disaster. One section was partially clipped close, and handfuls of hair were missing throughout. A pair of hair clippers, cord dangling and dragging behind, was clutched in one of Gen’s hands.

“I can’t hold it up long enough,” Gen admitted, chin tucked down. His hospital-pale skin was flushed red, his knuckles white on the clippers. 

Nikomedes could see how many times he’d tried and failed to keep his rebellious, weakened arm– the uninjured one– up against his scalp. He took the clippers and steered Gen toward his own bathroom, one hand on his son’s good shoulder.

“Sit,” he said, voice gruff with sleep.

Gen, wonder of wonders, did what he was told for once.

It terrified Nikomedes.

The hum of the clippers filled the tiled bathroom. Gen didn’t duck away from the guard run along the curve of his head, didn’t whine and complain about the tiny blades pulling at tender roots. His good hand, resting atop his thigh, trembled.

The terror turned to grief. Not for the first time, Nikomedes prayed, though he already knew the answer: _gods, let it be me, let me carry it if someone must suffer; put him back together_.

The answer, as always, was a _no_ delivered in utter silence.

“You should sleep,” Nikomedes said. Long hanks of hair fell to the floor, curling as they piled on the tile. “What time is it?”

“After three,” Gen answered, tensing. 

Nikomedes caught himself, on the verge of a lecture, and swallowed hard. “You’ll sleep during surgery, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes,” Gen said, voice thin. 

“We leave at six,” Nikomedes said. He brushed stray strands off Gen’s bare shoulder. “Your bag is packed?”

It was an inane question. The bag was already downstairs by the back door, waiting, and they both knew it. 

He hated not knowing how to talk to his boy. He let himself sink into quiet, tilting Gen’s head this way and that with his fingers, to trim up the sides and back. 

“I used to cut Temanus’ hair,” he said finally. 

“Stenides wouldn’t let you,” Gen said distantly, as if he were far away. “He said you pulled too hard.”

“I thought he just liked his hair longer,” Nikomedes said, stricken, acutely aware of his large hands and the small clippers. He thought of the way he could make sand rise in puffs of cloud from the top of the worn punching bag in the basement.

Gen hadn’t uttered a syllable of protest.

“Stenides is a wimp,” Gen said dismissively. “He used to cry when I pinched his arm and then lie about it.”

Nikomedes stilled for a moment, thinking, wondering what other things Stenides had never said and hidden so well. 

“He liked playing hockey,” he said, haltingly, trying to fit the pieces together. Were there any of his children he truly _knew_?

“He loves hockey,” Gen corrected. “Maybe he just doesn’t like me.”

“He likes you,” Nikomedes said. The clippers moved again. He was relieved to be back on solid ground, in the realm of certainties. “He also likes being in charge, and you’d never let him get away with it.”

Gen chuckled, a coarse laugh in his chest. “That’s probably true,” he conceded. He sighed.

“The surgery won’t be as hard as the last one,” Nikomedes said.

They were a family of liars.

“I’m not worried about it,” Gen said.

There was another long silence. Nikomedes turned the clippers off and appraised his work. 

“It’s…after,” Gen admitted. 

Nikomedes said nothing. He could only lie so much. 

“If they say…they said…the doctor…he said the nerve damage might be…”

Gen trailed off, voice shaking, and rubbed at his freshly shorn scalp. Their gazes met in the mirror. The short cut made Gen look older, and more ill– the shadows under his eyes seemed more noticeable now. Nikomedes’ iron self-discipline kept him from looking away too quickly.

“I’m sick of needing help to wash it,” Gen said, offering a rare explanation. 

“It looks fine,” Nikomedes said gruffly. He unplugged the hair clippers and wrapped the rubbery black cord around the hand grip. “Lean over the sink.”

“You don’t have to–”

“You’re going to get little bits of hair all over the house, Gen. Lean over.”

“I don’t care if I–”

“Lean. Over. Eugenides.”

Gen leaned over the sink and Nikomedes turned on the water, testing it with his fingers as it ran cold, then hot, then warm. He kept his hand there for longer than necessary, waiting to make sure it wouldn’t change again. He cupped his hand and began pouring water over Gen’s head, his other hand on the back of Gen’s neck. His boy relaxed under the touch, and Nikomedes realized he was unconsciously kneading the muscle there. It was hard as rock, and softened under his calloused fingers, while he rubbed soap into Gen’s scalp.

Then he rinsed that off and turned off the water. Gen didn’t sit up at first. Nikomedes grabbed a towel from the closet, thinking he was waiting to not drip all over the floor. It wasn’t until he saw Gen’s face turned toward him that he realized Gen was almost asleep, dozing while droplets trickled into the basin.

“Gen,” Nikomedes said gently. He pulled him upright by his good shoulder, let Gen’s head drop against his stomach while he toweled his short hair off. It only took a few seconds now, and the damp ends curled into themselves like they hadn’t since Gen was very young.

“Bed,” Nikomedes said, guiding Gen to his feet and out of the bathroom.

“No,” Gen mumbled, shaking his head. He tried to pull away and stumbled. Nikomedes caught him by his good arm, kept him upright, and steered him toward the king-sized bed.

“Yes,” Nikomedes said. 

Gen screwed up his face in an expression of profound disgust but complied the second his knees knocked into the bed frame. He blinked at the bed, not his own, and sighed. 

“Fine,” he said, still drowsy. He climbed toward the pillows.

Nikomedes’ pulled the covers over him, straightening the edges, and then laid down beside him. Gen’s eyes were already closed, but he opened them when the mattress dipped under his father’s weight. 

His eyes were pale smudges in the dark, searching Nikomedes’ face for something. Nikomedes wondered what he would say, what he should say, to calm his son’s fears. His policy had always been honesty about hardship, not misdirection. Gen would see right through any faltering attempt, like the one earlier.

In the end, it was Gen who spoke first.

“How did you know you loved mom?”

Nikomedes blinked. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t expected Gen’s mind to go in that direction at all.

“Forget it,” Gen said, voice small and quiet. “It’s nothing.”

“I never stopped falling in love with your mother,” Nikomedes said. “From the day I first noticed her, I loved her more every time I saw her.”

The bathroom light was still on, and the beam it cast across the bed caught the wet line down Gen’s face with a reflective glint. Nikomedes brushed a thumb across the track of tears, wiping it away. 

“Sweetheart,” he said, desperately, in a way he hadn’t in years. 

There was no fix for this, no drill he could run until he’d mastered the motions required. He didn’t know how to plan for things like Gen’s wild mind, his quick and fragile heart. 

“Forget it,” Gen said again, shaking his head. He shifted until his forehead was pressed against Nikomedes’ arm. “I’m tired.”

Nikomedes kissed the top of his head, newly cut hair scratching against his skin, and put his arm around his boy to hold him close.

Morning would come too soon.


	10. Drink as Cultural Practice

The night was cool. Irene propped the window open, letting the breeze drift into the room. It soothed her feverish skin, warm not with illness but exhaustion. She inhaled deeply of the fresh air, the loamy pine scent. 

There was more paperwork to do, another email to draft as she considered how to gently decline any outright agreement with Mede University without sabotaging the grant money they were currently helping her acquire. The southern dorm still needed remodeling to be up to code.

On top of the paperwork sat the box of earrings. She’d set them there to stare at before going to open the window, her chest suddenly tight. She couldn’t make any sense of them. They were too expensive to be a mere poor joke, too pretty to be a taunt of some kind.

For not the first time, she thought about that night. 

He’d found her when her heart was broken, when she was hiding to shove the pieces back together so she could escape the entire farce with her dignity intact. 

It was the only dance she’d had at her own wedding. 

He hadn’t known she’d cried. The only tears she let escape that night had slipped down her face when he held her hand in the cold, his fingers warm against her icy ones. 

She had thought she loved the man she’d spent the previous two years beside, and it turned out she hadn’t known or loved him at all. It was just ambition masked as affection, strategy instead of sentiment. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was, now that it came to it.

What she did know was how to do her job.

Nobody knew better than she that her appointment was fueled by spite. The job offer had been extended because she had the technical education, if none of the experience, and the former dean hated her. He’d loathed her ever since she’d gone back into the reception of her own wedding and pointedly dropped the wedding band into her husband’s wine glass while every eye was on her. 

When he tried to laugh it off, she’d smashed the glass against his teeth. She only had a brief glimpse of the dean rushing to his side, while his son’s mouth dripped wine and blood, because when she left she hadn’t looked back.

The best man followed her and took over her phone for the next three days, answering every call and text, and helping her file for annulment. It should have been a red flag that her one-day husband had needed to borrow _her_ friend for his best man. 

Gaius had been a saint and then he’d left the state and they didn’t stay in touch the way they’d said they would. He was busy, she was busy. She didn’t begrudge him moving on– that was the way college was supposed to work.

She was the one who’d made the mistake of caring about this job that was supposed to be temporary. She was the one who couldn’t leave.

Voices drifted through the window and she peered down. Nobody was on the far-below sidewalk, and the voices were closer than that. She tilted her head to listen, curious who else was on campus so late.

Then she heard the deep laugh of Teleus, her chief of campus security. She smiled, a brief break in her recent melancholy. It was nice to hear him laugh. When he’d taken the job, he’d done so as a military vet who seemed to have no sense of humor at all. She didn’t have to guess who was in the room with him, while he kept a long night watch. The only person it could have been was Relius– they’d developed a friendship, or as close as Relius every got to anything called friendship.

For a moment, she thought about going an office down to say hello, or send them home. 

All it would do was disrupt whatever they were talking about, and she didn’t fit into that part of their lives. She also had work to do.

She wondered, briefly, how Eugenides was doing.

Then, she put the earrings away and sat down with her pen and paperwork again.

There was a soft knock on the door. 

There was a hushed conversation on the other side, a low and unhurried argument. 

“It’s unlocked,” she said.

The door swung open. Relius held a pair of wine glasses in his hand, the neck of a bottle dangling from the other hand. Teleus was behind him, expression stiff and uncomfortable, a glass stem pinched in calloused fingers. 

“Burning the midnight oil?” Relius asked. His hair, usually held back in a tight, neat ponytail, was loose and dusting his shoulders. “Have a glass with us.”

Irene’s gaze narrowed at them. It had been Relius who taught her not to accept any offer without examining it first, that nothing free or friendly was to be trusted until after it had been tested. 

“Teleus wants a raise,” Relius said easily. He slipped across the room and set the glasses down. One had the shiny gloss of dregs in the bottom already. He kept that one close to himself. “There. You have our reason for barging in.”

“I don’t,” Teleus protested, his discomfort twisting into annoyance. It smoothed out when he looked at Irene. “I don’t,” he repeated, apologetic. 

“How drunk are you?” she asked Relius. She accepted the glass of dark wine he’d poured and held out, but she didn’t sip it. He perched on the edge of a chair.

“Just enough to feel bad that you’re over here alone at two in the morning,” he said. 

“Is it two?” she asked, actually surprised. She massaged her temple and let herself slump back a little in the chair. She tasted the wine; it was very good. “You, feel bad? How many glasses has he had, Teleus?”

“Two,” Relius answered, pouring a bit more.

“Four,” Teleus corrected. He’d come further into the room now, but hadn’t taken the other chair across from her. He stood behind it, his wine glass cupped in his hand. Relius shot him a wounded look. 

“Traitor,” he said.

“You already threw me under the bus,” Teleus said, undaunted. “With a lie, no less. I’m very happy with my current salary, Ms. Irene.”

“Hm,” she said. The wine was rich on her tongue. “Yet you’re here past midnight without overtime. You don’t resent that?”

Teleus was quiet for so long Irene began to be concerned, worried that she’d poked at a sore spot in her structure. She couldn’t afford to find a replacement for Teleus now, and she had no money to offer as a raise or bonus. She was too tired for this, too tired to be smart about it. Relius probably already regretted the intrusion, even buzzed as he was.

“I don’t,” Teleus said finally, a little quickly, responding to the growing iciness in the room. “I’m just trying to think of a way to say so without Relius mocking me.”

“Me?” Relius said, with mock offense. “Teleus, dear. I’d never.”

Teleus snorted into his wine. 

He dropped into the chair and raised his eyes to meet Irene’s, across the desk. 

“I like staying busy,” Teleus said seriously. 

Relius muttered something into his glass and Teleus scowled, reached over the space separating them, and jerked Relius’ hair so hard that the man’s head snapped sideways and he tumbled into the chair. He righted himself, laughing, the wine held aloft and not a drop spilled. 

Irene relaxed into her own seat, the chill dispersed. 

“Eugenides has a second surgery this morning,” Relius said. 

“And?” Irene prompted, an eyebrow raised.

“You wanted to stay appraised,” Relius returned coolly. He studied her, making no effort to hide his careful attention when he added: “I’ve heard that he may have permanent nerve damage.”

“Hm,” Irene said, hiding her mouth behind the tipped wine glass. 

“Complete loss of function in his hand, maybe the whole arm.”

“Relius,” Irene said, smothering the intense wave of guilt that swelled in her chest. “If you were hoping to catch me off guard, you should have gotten me drunk instead of yourself. You’ve done it the wrong way around.”

His smile was a knife’s honed edge. The lamp light glinted off his straight, white teeth. The problem with a man like Relius was that he could cut those around him to bone just as quickly as he cut an enemy– his friendship wasn’t always comfortable.

“Why would news about Eugenides catch you off guard?” he asked, smoothly. Teleus was back to looking stiffly out of place. He cleared his throat and Relius, without taking his eyes off Irene, handed him the wine by the bottle neck.

Irene reached a hand out, waving her fingers once in a tight, commanding gesture. Teleus leaned forward to hand her the bottle without comment. She filled her glass and Relius laughed again, that same astringent sound. His piercing attention fell away, he slouched in the chair, and sighed. 

“Gods,” he said after a moment. “I am drunk. Why did you let me get drunk, Teleus.”

“Why indeed,” Irene said tightly. 

“Careful, dear,” Relius said. From him it wasn’t patronizing, the way it was when Nahuseresh said it– it was a bit fond, a bit wry. “If you think you’ve kept a secret, you’re better off finding out how poorly it’s kept alone with friends instead of in front of a crowd with the opposition.”

Irene froze, and then nodded. It was a warning. She could heed a warning. 

“A game,” Relius said.

“Li, it’s almost three,” Teleus said with a groan. 

Relius met Irene’s eyes, with an outright dare.

“Come on,” he said. “Never ever have I ever…”

Irene laughed, putting a hand over her eyes. “This isn’t middle school, Relius. Teleus, take him home.”

“A different game then,” he said. “Don’t assign me a babysitter. I’m perfectly sober.”

“You’re a liar. What’s your question?” Irene asked, laughing, and giving in. “You’d only want to play if you were digging for information.”

Relius stared at her for a long time, as if considering. He hesitated, looked sidelong at Teleus, and sighed.

“The grants. When will you tell Nahuseresh to fuck off? His little secretary keeps slinking around like a beaten dog and it makes me sad.”

“The moment I can afford to,” Irene said. “But that wasn’t your question.”

“No,” Relius said. “But like I said, I’m not that drunk. I’d like to keep my head, thank you. Come on, Tel. We can sleep it off in my office.”

“Need a ride home, ma’am?” Teleus asked, standing. “I’ll get one of the night shift to drive you.”

“No, thank you,” Irene said. “I’ll–”

She looked around the office. Thought of sitting there, with the earrings and the dark and not sleeping. She changed her mind.

“Actually, yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll send Costis up,” he said. “Have a good night.”

“Sweet dreams, dear,” Relius said, saluting with his glass from the doorway. “Give Teleus a raise.”

“Li,” Teleus said, in a gruff pleading tone. 

Relius laugh filled the doorway, sharply gleeful and mocking. Irene knew he’d meant to ask about the earrings and was glad he hadn’t.

They left. She pulled a stack of sticky notes out and wrote, “Send flowers to hospital,” on the top one. She stared at it for a long time, debating. When the nightshift guard knocked on the door, she pulled it off the pad, crumpled it, and threw it away. 


End file.
